{"id":10587,"date":"2025-01-14T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T22:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10587"},"modified":"2025-01-14T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T22:10:30","slug":"no-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/01\/14\/no-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"No Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"No Mercy<\/strong> (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richard Pearce\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jim Carabatsos\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alan Silvestri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michel Brault\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 19, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Jeroen Krabbe, George Dzundza, Gary Basaraba, William Atherton, Terry Kinney, Ely Pouget, Bruce McGill, Marita Geraghty, Aleta Mitchell, Fred Gratton, Dionisio, Charles S. Dutton, Kim Chan, George Dickerson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $12.3M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Funny, I remember really liking No Mercy<\/strong> when it came out. Now I think it\u2019s just a hair above mediocre. It has a so-so storyline, a poorly defined villain and an unconvincing performance from Richard Gere. I never once believed he was a cop from Chicago. He doesn\u2019t have the right Windy City attitude. It would be a different story if he played a cop from L.A. like he did in Internal Affairs four years later. If you haven\u2019t seen it, I urge you to check it out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gere plays Eddie Jillette, a cop out for revenge against the New Orleans crime lord (Krabbe, The Living Daylights) who murdered his partner (Basaraba, Fried Green Tomatoes) during an unauthorized undercover op. He heads down to the Big Easy to track down Losado. The only thing he has to go on is the woman who was with him when he did the deed. Eddie locates the woman, Michel (Basinger, 9 \u00bd Weeks), and takes her into custody. Handcuffed together, they spend a great deal of the movie trying to outrun Losado and his goons in the Louisiana Bayou.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Richard Pearce (Country), No Mercy<\/strong> isn\u2019t without its good points. It positively brims with New Orleans flavor. You can almost taste the Cajun spices on the food. I also love its film noir trappings. Pearce takes us to places where no tourist would ever dare set foot. Eddie moves through the seedy underbelly of the city encountering dangerous criminal types in search of the beautiful woman with a parrot tattoo who can lead him to Losado. If there\u2019s one thing No Mercy<\/strong> doesn\u2019t lack, it\u2019s atmosphere. It has it in spades.<\/p>\n

\u00a0An action movie can sink or swim based on its villain. No Mercy<\/strong> is a case of the former. Losado is a weak antagonist. There\u2019s nothing outstanding or particularly memorable about him. We know he deals in human trafficking and that he\u2019s in business with a wealthy local family. We also know he owns Michel. It\u2019s explained that she was sold to him by her own mother when she was 13. She\u2019s been in servitude to him since then. Basically, the guy is a sleaze and a cop killer. He never exudes the level of danger one expects from a movie villain. He\u2019s as generic as they come.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gere, like I said, isn\u2019t believable as a Chicago cop. He puts forth visible effort, but it doesn\u2019t pay off in the end. He\u2019s as generic a hero as Krabbe is a bad guy. It\u2019s a perfect match. Basinger isn\u2019t much better. At this point in her career, the former model was little more than a pretty face and a hot body. She doesn\u2019t yet have the gravitas to pull off a complex character like Michel, a grown woman seen by other as either property or a whore. She can\u2019t even read. Such a tragic character should elicit more sympathy than Basinger does. To be fair, the two leads have some chemistry, enough that they would reunite six years later in the suspense-thriller Final Analysis.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The best performance in No Mercy<\/strong> comes from George Dzundza (No Way Out) as Eddie\u2019s CO. He doesn\u2019t like Eddie very much and makes this clear on more than one occasion. At the same time, he wants him to catch his partner\u2019s killer, setting him up with a small arsenal for that purpose. He\u2019s the one who properly conveys the Chicago attitude. Bruce McGill (Animal House) is okay as the New Orleans detective who wants Eddie to get the hell out of his jurisdiction. I wish they had done more with William Atherton (Die Hard) who plays a member of the aforementioned wealthy family. He was the go-to guy in the 80s for arrogant d-bag characters. He plays one here, but it feels like he\u2019s phoning it in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While No Mercy<\/strong> is in part a chase thriller, the only real action goes down in the finale when Eddie lures Losado and his men to a hotel where they do battle. It\u2019s a pretty good sequence. I like it when Losado bursts through a wall of fire like the Kool-Aid guy in pursuit of Eddie and Michel (of course she\u2019s present). That, to me, is pure 80s action movie fun. The rest of No Mercy<\/strong> is just okay. I don\u2019t know why I thought it was great back in \u201986. I guess I was less discriminating as a teen. Now it\u2019s just a crime thriller on autopilot.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Mercy (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richard Pearce\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jim Carabatsos\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alan Silvestri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michel Brault\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 19, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Jeroen Krabbe, George Dzundza, Gary Basaraba, William Atherton, Terry Kinney, Ely Pouget, Bruce McGill, Marita Geraghty, Aleta Mitchell, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/No-Mercy-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10587"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10749,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10587\/revisions\/10749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}